[KFCC] Time and Tide Review

Story: Tyler gets drunk with a woman only to end up sleeping with her and finding out a few months later that she is pregnant. Tyler feels a responsibility for the child to be born and becomes a bodyguard for an unlicensed company to earn money to care for his future child. While working for this company, he befriends a man named Jack, who has repaired to Hong Kong after spending years in the jungles of Brazil as a mercenary. When some assassins arrive from Brazil to give a new job to Jack, Tyler end up on the opposite side of his new friend Jack.

Review: Time and Tide is an action movie from the talented Tsui Hark. This movie has had a fair amount of hype around it and did quite well in Hong Kong. When you start watching the movie it seems devoid of any high paced action but don't let this fool you. The beginning is merely setting up the story of the movie but if you look at where the movie starts and where it ends, it also seems like a very loose story. None the less, the story is very entertaining but people who are not use to watch HK movies might find the story hard to follow.

The story is focused mainly on two characters who each on their own have a lot to deal with. There isn't any real background but there is somewhat of a development for the two characters as they each have a lot on the line, friendship and family responsibilities. Then there are the support characters that are just there to add to the general story. They are all pretty ordinary, well expect for a few and one of them is the one played by Anthony Wong. The villains are also pretty colorful in this movie, they are not just generic bad guys. You can see that each bad guys are very unique and well thought out, even if they die quickly. All the actors were good in this movie, especially Wu Bai who we would like to see in other movie. Wu Bai is actually a Taiwanese rock star.

The movie does not just have some action but action that is done with style! The scenes are very well thought out and you end up with some really nice camera shots. Not to mention the special effects used to enhance the scenes, unlike some American movie where the special affects are the scene. In Time and Tide, the special effects are carefully used to enhanced the scenes and making them look better. The action fans might find the first half of the movie a little boring but don't worry its worth the ride because things start to stir up during the second half and just don't stop. Also, some scenes in the movie make fun of John Woo movies, we don't know if it was really intentional but it was very funny.

The subtitles were very good in the theater version of this movie, we saw it at a special screening in Montreal. We heard lot of things about Time and Tide before we've seen it, one thing was that the story did not hold itself together but also that it had some intense action. We had a feeling that it was not as hyped as it sounded so we watched to movie with no expectations. The movie turned out being very entertaining, and there was a lot of *cool* scenes to talk about after the movie. The movie is very good but the more action orientated viewer might find the beginning a little boring. We recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys Tsui Hark movies and HK action movies in general.